


Homecoming

by SharpestRose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adventures of a pissed off shewolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

Her target was blonde, and didn’t seem to have anybody who was close to her, nobody that cared. Perfect, really. The name was terrible, but beggars can’t be choosers. Eventually she’d trade up and get a better one, but it would be years before she’d have another gem like her old one.

(He hadn’t thought her name was nice. “It’s a kind of wart, you know.” He’d told her, as if she’d been stupid enough not to know a thing like that about her own name.)

Thinking of it now, while facing a future under such a mundane moniker, made her sigh with regret. A name like that should have gotten more airtime then just the year or two she’d kept it. Oh well, perhaps someday she’d learn to love the new one.

That made her laugh, which in turn made her wince, the scars still raw when she stretched them too much. She’d crept deep into the sewers, not the place she wanted to be in the least, but like she always said, beggars can’t be choosers, and she’d needed to heal. The woods were crawling with strange men with tasers, so the tunnels were required, the only way she’d survived was by shifting halfway for a few weeks. In that state, somewhere between human and not, the wounds had been less, and she’d sat in the dark dankness, hating everyone above her.

But that was the past. That was Veruca’s story, and she wasn’t Veruca anymore. For now, she was simply a stray, without home or label. Soon, however, she would be... and the word made her cruel lips curl in disgust as she spat it, hating it, hating being desperate enough to use it... Anne. Soon as she knew enough about Anne’s life to move in and not screw up.

It would be easy enough, she’d done it so often before. First thing to do was always quitting the job, by phone, and asking for a reference – she always chose lives that were squeaky-clean enough to get good references. With this glowing reccomendation and a low-cut top, it was easy enough to find new work. Singing in the bar downtown had evolved into a life she’d loved, singing had never been an ambition, but music was fun and interesting, primal. So many of her kind were drawn to that world, which had lead to many nights of passion with the males and many petty fights with the females. She didn’t like having rivals.

Singing was no longer an option, though, sadly. Waitressing was not really a desirable choice, either. Maybe she’d just abandon the whole thing completely and go back to the woods, run through the snow-covered ground (god she missed snow) and howl at the moon. Visit Tom, with his corncob pipe and back door left slightly ajar, no questions ever asked about the little niece who would turn up naked and filthy on his hearth during the full moon night most months. Tom, who looked like that old actor Joseph Cotton – all exhausted and haggard, always playing the observer to the more interesting characters.

A pang of homesickness for Tom’s house, and for the woods surrounding it, stabbed through her. She remembered the hunter that had tracked her for weeks, last year. How Tom had levelled the gun at his face with the air still stinking of the warning shot just fired and enough terror to fill a small ocean (she wouldn’t admit that some of it had been her own). No matter what name she was going under, no matter how long it had been since she’d pushed the back door open (with the little rusty squeak so he’d know she was visiting), Tom would welcome her and protect her. Family. Home.

~

After two more days, she has a new home. She’d been looking forward to killing the current Anne, to be honest. The human race hasn’t been in her good books lately, and the thought of thinning the herd had been vaguely appetising. But she’s been denied her enjoyment when the girl flaked out and flittered off, joining some group that worshipped the auras of birds. She hasn’t paid much attention to the various effervescent passtimes Anne indulges in. Her own spirituality is an earthy thing, the rocks and trees and cold winter’s air.

First things first, smashing the lightbulbs and ripping the curtains off the windowframes. Day is light and night is dark and there is no reason to subvert a natural order that fits life so perfectly. The only exception she has ever made to her rule was the fire Tom would light at sunset, warming the room through the night and dancing, orange and alive. When she was a child, she’d watched it for hours, the flames taunting her, whispering in their crackles and spits. Nature cannot be tamed. If it behaves, it is simply luck that what nature wants and what humans want are the same thing. The little flame on the hearth could burn her to death, burn the house, burn the whole forest down. It was only luck that this never occurred.

Find the proof of identity – stupid little scraps of paper that prove she is this person, the only reason that she steals the lives of others instead of inventing one of her own. There’s not much, just the stuff that anybody can get by living a life for a year or two. Pay slips, junk mail, membership card to a local clothes store. Crap. Complete and utter crap. She rocks back onto her heels in the small patch of sunlight that is perfect for crouching in. This is nobody’s life, just a mask to hide behind. She could have made one of those for herself, and made it better. This is garbage.

Make-up’s dreadful, perfumes with names like vanilla kisses and starlit. Floaty, flouncy, shimmery things that make her cough and gag. Eyeshadows in blues and greys, like leprosy. She prefers to wear browns. Lipsticks no better, unless she wants to paint her mouth with some coral thing called sunset or a glittering slash of goldy-yellow named sympathy. Sympathy. All the lipsticks that have ever graced her face have worn labels like devil or wicked or vengence.

No makeup, no identification, no clothes worth salvaging. A little room for a little life that wasn’t hers and hadn’t been the last Anne’s either, she is sure now. Perhaps the real Anne has been dead for a very long time, or had never been at all. She can’t see that flighty creature killing anyone, tearing the skin like tough meat and dumping the pieces in the bushes, buried so that no one would catch the scent and be able to follow her trail.

There is money, though. And that almost makes it worth the trouble. Not very much, but there never is in the lives she chooses. Enough to buy new clothes and a burger, because she loves burgers and it’s too much trouble to get human food on the road. Someone had once told her, some shewolf that had tried to befriend her when their bands were gigging together, that there were techniques to hold the change at bay, even when the moon was a full silver coin in the sky. It seems to her that she’s found a better secret, how to bring the power, the life, into her, even when the moon is a thin nailclipping between heavy clouds. It would be like learning how to remain conscious in the grave after death, to hold the change off. What would be the point? It’s not really being alive.

And then when the burger is eaten and the new clothes are sticking to her skin with summery sweat (god how she misses the snow), she sticks her thumb out and waits until some guy or another is drawn by a fellow human in need with nice tits, or at least they would be nice if not for the ugly scarring on her neck.

On the trip away from the heat towards the cold she learns all the songs, the country and western ones about the man in the cowboy hat with the broken heart, and the tot-pop ones about the pretty blonde girl with the broken heart, and the frat-rock ones about the man in the red baseball cap with the broken heart. Sometimes all these broken hearts irritate her, and she asks politely if they can shut the radio off, please, or at least find a station with a different song.

Eventually, after the songs and the cars and the place names are a huge blur of too many memories, she reaches where she's been going. The house is just as it has always been, but smaller then she remembers because she’s bigger then she was last time, couple of years ago now, and her shoes still crunch on the gravel in a noise like the static when you breathe gently onto a microphone.

“Oh darling, so good to see you.” Tom says, leaving a pause for her to say what name she goes by now. It hasn’t really crossed her mind, but she still hates Anne. Who will she be now, having hovered as a nameless stray for months?

“Cybil.” she says finally, looking at Tom’s face that’s so familiar it makes her heart hurt. His eyes light up at the word, the first one, before Ellenora or Kela or Fern or Veruca or goddam Anne. The girl she was when Tom first brought her up here, when everything was still confusing and big, the girl who had been so scared of the way to moon made her feel.

Yes, she can be that girl again, for a while at least.

“I’ve got a lodger now, some kid from the city. He’s all right, you’ll probably get along.” Tom says with the sparkle in his eye, the one he used to get when he’d brought her a present back from town, a little wooden puppet on a string or a hoop that she could make twist and dance around her hips.

He’s chopping wood, something that suits him even as it is the most unsuitable thing she can imagine for him to be doing. Perhaps he catches the sense of her on the breeze, because his eyes flash with recognition even before he’s looking at her.

“Daniel, this is my niece, Cybil.” Tom says by way of introduction. She puts her hand out warily, grudges aren’t something she holds well but she’s not stupid either. His touch is different, something has stolen his confidence away. Rejection by his mate.

That makes her smile, a true smile, not one of revenge. They are equal, scar for scar (because she can see that someone’s performed surgery on him, and it doesn’t look like they were very careful), hurt for hurt. And with an equal starting point, they can begin again.

“Pleased to meet you, Cybil.” He says with a slight smile, that little ironic thing that is like a being in itself. As if he understands just as she does.

“Likewise.”

Tom smiles too, as if he understands everything that isn’t said in that single word. Then he walks back towards the front door, where he had been sitting and smoking when she’d stepped into view.

She picks up an axe and begins to help with the chopping, wishing that she still had a voice that wasn’t scratched and scarred. Work was always easier when she could sing to pass the time. Perhaps she’ll tell him all about it, some day, while they sit by the fire and Tom rocks in his big old chair.

Home.

Family.

~


End file.
